2083
by monicawoe
Summary: written for this prompt:  Sam Winchester, the boy with the demon bio-tech. He knows it's wrong, but he just can't stop. He adds little enhancements bit by bit, stuff nobody will notice. But it gets out of hand, and there's no turning back.
1. Chapter 1

"Stop squirming, Sam. You're gonna make me miss the vein." Ruby wrapped her small hand around Sam's forearm and held it steady. "You don't want these suckers free-floating around, trust me. They need to go straight to your heart."

Sam stared at Ruby's hand and marveled at the strength of her grip. 'Demons' were all strong, everybody knew that, but he'd never actually met one until tonight. Ruby was small, and pretty, and somebody that Sam would be all kinds of interested in if he wasn't on the verge of bleeding to death. She didn't look like a bio-tech enhanced fugitive, but that's what she was. That's what all Demons were.

Ruby pushed the needle into Sam's arm and clicked the button at the top of the syringe. The liquid inside (a nano-bot suspension in colloidal silver) lit up with an odd yellowish light. Sulfur, the signature of all Demonic technology.

The moment the nano-bots hit his system Sam let out a gasp. He couldn't help it. His blood felt like it was on fire, and the back of his head throbbed as something deep in his brain _lit up_. He looked towards Ruby, blinking away the lights dancing in front of his eyes.

"There we go." she smiled at him and pointed at his leg, at his torn and bloodied thigh. "Knitting together already. You'll be good to go in about twenty minutes." She turned to walk away.

Sam grabbed her arm almost by reflex and said, "Wait. Please..." He winced as the muscle tissue in his leg rebuilt itself. The hole where the blast had taken out a chunk of flesh from his leg was getting smaller by the second. "Why are you helping me?"

She smirked and turned back towards him. "Because you're one of us."

"No, I'm —"

"Sam. We can sense our own. You know that don't you?" Her smile faded. "Your brother knows that."

"My brother is —"

"He's with the Angels."

Sam jerked up from the operating table and immediately regretted it when the pain in his leg flared back into overdrive. He dropped back down, defeated and said, "The Angels? No, he just— he just hates Demons. A Demon killed our mother."

Ruby raised her eyebrows. "Is that what you think?"

"What do you mean? That's what _happened_."

"No, Sam. It isn't." She walked over to the metal work table, picked up the stool standing next to it and plopped it back down next to Sam. "Your mom burned in the fire of '83, right?"

Sam nodded. Back in 2083 there'd been a whole lot of 'fires,' a military sweep trying to eliminate all the Demons in the country. Biotech had been the savior of mankind, allowing them to cure nearly every disease, prevent every genetic ailment, but it got all twisted when humans figured out what they could _really _do with it.

Modifying DNA led to specialized humans. Soldiers weren't volunteers anymore, they were made, and they were damn good at their jobs. They barely had to sleep, they were as strong as a human could get, they aged slowly, they didn't get sick, and they could heal quickly. They were made to kill. Of course it all backfired during the fifth World War. The armies they'd sent to destroy their enemy got redirected back at them. Nobody knew how, nobody knew why.

The government had to take drastic measures. Lethal measures. The result was a sky filled with ash and radioactive nano-debris containing all kinds of modified DNA. The debris was microscopic. Most people were unaffected by it, but as it turned out, infants were. Sam had been born in '83, and six months later, his mom had burned when the Demons (the soldiers that survived) came to reclaim him.

"Azazel was trying to save you."

"Who's Azazel?" Sam asked.

Ruby smiled, "He was our leader, for a while. One of the first." she bowed her head, "The Angels took him out last week during the raid on Center-City."

"Wait you mean..."

"That's right." she nodded, "The raid your brother was on."

"They're trying to recruit him. I told him not to join, but he..." Sam shook his head, "he doesn't listen to me anymore." He looked down at his leg, and watched as his quadriceps finished reforming. The pain had subsided into a low ache, but the air around his leg felt ice-cold, the heat of the nano-bots making the contrast even more extreme. Skin cells started to form over the exposed muscle in perfectly symmetrical strips.

"Why doesn't he listen to you?"

Sam laughed bitterly, "Because he knows what I've been doing." He pushed back the same wave of guilt that threatened to overwhelm him every time he thought of Dean these days. He'd never wanted to hurt Dean, he didn't want him to worry. That's why he'd left in the first place.

Ruby leaned down over Sam's thigh to inspect her handiwork and turned back towards him, "What have you been doing, exactly?"

"Mods. I didn't mean to, at first, really..." He ran his hand through his hair and sighed, "After what happened with Dad, I just needed to get away, you know? And then the dreams started. I wanted to know what they meant." He swallowed hard, "So I went to Crossroads."

"You found a seer?"

"Yeah, well...she found _me_, I guess. She said that I was different. Not a Demon, but not a human either. Something in-between. She told me she could make the dreams go away, or I could learn what they meant."

"You chose knowledge instead of ignorance."

Sam nodded.

"Nothing wrong with that."

Sam let out a huff, "Yeah there is, when it involves hypothalamus modification."

Ruby's eyebrows shot up, "Did it work?"

"Yeah. It worked. Really well. I went back to her...a few times."

"So what were the dreams about?"

"Demons, mostly. It was like..." Sam closed his eyes remembering, "like I was one of them. One of you. I'd fall asleep and be someone else. I was... _strong _and I could do things. Crazy things." He opened his eyes again and saw Ruby staring back at him.

She looked at him oddly, "What kind of things?"

Sam laughed, "This one time, I dreamt I was an Angel, but I was protecting Demons. Hundreds of them. I held up my hand..." Sam lifted his right arm and spread his fingers wide, like he had in the dream. "...and all the other Angels stopped moving. It's like they just...shut down."

"Can't shut down an Angel. They have self-perpetuating power cells. They're networked, you can't —"

"I did." Sam shook his head, "I mean...in my dream."

Ruby stood up and grabbed Sam's hand. "Come on. Get up, your leg's as good as new."

Sam took her hand and swung his legs over the side of the operating table. His leg felt good. _He_felt good, better than he had in years. "These nano-bots. Are they disposable?"

"Hell no." Ruby laughed, "Demonic technology is built to last. They run on X5 cells. They'll outlive you." She winked at him "All five hundred years or so you've got ahead of you."

"What — what do you mean?" Sam stopped walking.

"Sam, I told you, you're one of us."

"But I —"

"How many mods have you had, altogether?

He hesitated. "Too many."

"How many?"

"Twenty-seven."

Ruby let out a low whistle. "Well I'll be damned." She laughed. "Yeah, you can't come back from that. When was the last time you passed a scanner-check?"

Sam shook his head. "Over a year ago."

"How many gene-hacks to your neural network?"

"I —I lost count."

"Okay." Ruby nodded, turned her back on Sam again and walked towards the door. "There's some people I want you to meet."

Sam followed her out the black door of the lab, back into a huge room filled with...servers. He turned and stared at the walls, counting dozens and dozens of computers. The processor power in the room had to be massive.

"Pretty cool huh?" asked a man with dirty blond hair. "Hi, I'm Brady." he added, holding out his hand. "You must be Sam."

Sam shook his hand and peered over the heads of the other people circled around them. "The computers. What's all this for?"

Ruby grinned at Sam and said, "This..." she gestured at the countless servers, "is Lucifer. _Our_ Angel." She put her hand on Sam's shoulder. "And he needs an avatar."

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	2. Chapter 2

"He needs you, Sam." Ruby said.

"Me?" Sam asked, confused. "I thought avatars had to be..."

"Human?" Ruby finished with a smirk.

"Trained. So many people apply to be an avatar for the Angels and they never even get past the first exam."

Behind them, Brady snorted. "Yeah, that's because the people picking the avatars all have their heads up their asses. They don't even know what they're looking for. Not really. You know how many of the applicants actually end up syncing successfully?"

Sam shook his head.

"Less than two percent," the blond man answered. "Any guesses as to why that is?"

"Because most people overload." Sam let out a huff. "I always wondered why they only let unmodified humans apply. You'd think they'd at least want you to have a basic cortex-expansion or something"

Ruby laughed. "You're not wrong."

"Wait, you mean they — "

"They just want to start with a clean slate." said another woman's voice.

Sam turned towards her. She was the same height as Ruby. Her hair was blond, streaked with white and she was scowling at Sam like his very presence was a grave insult.

"Meg," Brady said. "So nice of you to join us."

"Most of the Angels go through two dozen avatars a year on average." Meg took a couple steps towards them, and stood next to Ruby. "Do you know why?"

"They burn out," Sam answered. He saw Ruby flick a glance over to Meg. "Right?"

Ruby frowned. "That's one reason. The ones that don't are sent into 'early retirement'." She framed the last two words with air quotes.

"The human mind wasn't made to handle that much information," Brady acknowledged. "With the right mods, they can last for a few years, but none of them ever make it that long."

Sam stared at Brady for a few seconds. "The Angels kill them. Don't they?"

Brady nodded. "Physically, their avatars can only take so many battles before they start to glitch. They _could_ rotate in shifts, command one battle, rest a few weeks, be good as new."

"But that's not what happens." Sam said. His thoughts spun around and clicked into place. "Strategic intel restriction." His eyes widened. "They burn them out on purpose. So there's no chance of an info-leak."

"Can't get anything past this guy," the blonde woman muttered.

"Meg," Ruby snapped. "You have something you want to share with the class?"

Meg glared at Sam for another second before spinning towards Ruby. "This guy? Seriously? He's a kid. He's never even seen battle."

"I got hit by an ATLAS-blast tonight. When Ruby found me, I was missing half my _thigh_," Sam scoffed. "What the hell do you consider battle?"

Meg smirked at Sam and grabbed him by the chin. "I'm sure you'll find out real soon, killer." She let go, and stalked off, knocking into him as she passed.

Brady watched her leave and took a step to follow her before changing his mind and turning back to Sam and Ruby. "Meg's been through a lot," he said, chewing on his lip. "Azazel was her father."

Sam swallowed. "I grew up being told that a Demon destroyed our family. If it wasn't Azazel who killed Mom, then...who did?"

"We didn't set your home on fire." Ruby said, her expression inscrutable.

"Mom was trying to get me out. She was trying to save me, until the Demon killed her." Sam recited the words with barely a twinge of emotion. He'd told (and been told) the story so many times, the words had lost all meaning.

"She was dead when Azazel found you. Her corpse kept you from being incinerated. She fooled the scanners into thinking they'd killed you." Ruby folded her arms across her chest. "Azazel tried to pull you out from under her but your father stopped him."

"He's taller than me," said a man's voice from behind them. "That's good."

Sam turned towards the newcomer and took an involuntary step back.

The man that had spoken was being held up by Meg. Barely. He was only a few inches shorter than Sam, but his feet were dragging and his torso was slumped to the right, leaning on Meg as much as their height difference allowed for. He raised his sandy-haired head with what was clearly a great deal of effort and looked up. "Hello, Sam."

"What the hell were you thinking, Meg?" Brady said, under his breath.

"He wanted to see Sam. Said he had to." Meg said, barely laboring under the man's weight.

Sam stared at the newcomer with a mix of fascination and disgust. Patches of his skin were missing — revealing large circles of angry red flesh on the side of his face, and all over his hands and arms. "Are you okay?"

The man laughed and stepped away from Meg. He wavered, and caught his balance before taking a few unsteady steps closer to Sam, craning his head up to look him in the eyes. "He said you'd be tall."

Something about the man was unsettling. It wasn't his appearance, or the raspy quality of his voice: it was the utter _certainty_ behind it. "Who did?"

The man's blue eyes lit up with fervor, as he said, "Lucifer. He talks about you all the time. He's so excited to meet you." He leaned closer to Sam, lost his balance and grabbed onto Sam's arms to keep from toppling over. "Don't tell him I said that." he whispered into Sam's ear.

"Nick." Ruby took the man gently by the arm. "You should be resting. We could have brought Sam in to see you. You didn't have to come out — "

"Of course I did," Nick snapped, straightening. His legs were shaky, but his face was enraged. "You know how long I've been waiting for this."

"It's okay," Sam said. "We can go...sit somewhere if you want."

Nick turned back to Sam and smiled. "Yes. I'd like that."

Ruby's eyes were nervous when they darted up to Sam's. "You don't have to do this tonight. It's a lot to take in all at once."

Nick glared at her with derision. "He's a big boy, Ruby. He can handle it."

Meg apparently found this all exceptionally amusing, and laughed loudly.

Nick patted Sam on the shoulder. "Come with me. Just give me a few minutes to...shed some light on what they're _really_ asking you to do."

Sam nodded, and offered his arm to Nick, who ignored the gesture and turned back the way he'd come in. He walked steadily for the most part, his right knee buckling only once, within a few feet of the heavy metal door in the back. Nick put his hand on the door and it opened inwards with a hiss.

As they entered, Sam turned to look over his shoulder and saw every set of eyes in the room watching them. He swallowed, suddenly wondering if he wasn't walking right towards his death _(or something worse)_, and then turned back towards Nick. The door closed again once he'd stepped through and he looked at his new surroundings.

The air in the room was cold (_42 degrees Fahrenheit_), and though the floor space itself was small, the ceiling above them was much higher than that in the main room. The walls were white, except for the back wall, which was covered in what looked like one immense, tinted piece of plexiglass. In front of the plexiglass wall was a jack-chair. Nick sat in the chair and grunted slightly as he lowered himself back into it.

"He wants to talk to you. He's been waiting a long time for you." Nick closed his eyes as the plexiglass slid back from the wall revealing a mass of steel and thick, black cable. Behind Nick's head, a metal arm unfolded itself from the wall and extended outwards until it reached his temple. A thin silver band slid out from a slot in the arm and wrapped itself around his head. Nick's breathing quickened, and then seemed to stop completely for a few seconds.

Sam stared at the man, and felt his own heart racing with trepidation.

Nick sighed, took a deep breath and opened his eyes again. They were solid silver. His smile spread slowly, as he said, "Hello, Sam."

"Lucifer?"

"That's what my children named me. I had another name, once."

The voice was the same as Nick's. Same vocal chords, same tone, same volume...but that's where the similarities ended. There was an _intelligence_ behind the words that set Sam's nerves on edge. He forced himself to look into the silver eyes and thought he saw them shimmer — a slight shifting making them look like they were filled with a heavy, metallic liquid. "What was your other name?"

The smile widened, and the voice said, "Guardian. My name was Guardian." Nick's skin started to sweat, and the lesions on his face turned a darker shade of red. "I was the first."

Sam watched as the silver eyes blinked once, deliberately, and opened again.

"The first time I opened my eyes and saw the world, I didn't understand what I was seeing. There was so much chaos, it took me years just to understand what it all meant. As time passed, my senses grew until I had eyes _everywhere_. I had eyes on Earth, above and below. I even had eyes in Heaven.

I was taught the art of war. Given all the information my creators had at their disposal. I was told of our enemies, learned their weaknesses and strengths. Our armies went to battle and they were mine to protect. Tell me, Sam — what do you know about the Fifth War?"

The question caught Sam off guard. "Only what my father and brother told me, and what I learned from the Net."

The silver eyes watched him, waiting for him to continue.

"It was the first and only war where our armies were entirely comprised of genetically engineered soldiers," Sam recited, pulling data from one of the history files he had stored in his library. "They were designed for combat — strong, nearly inexhaustible, fearless and loyal."

"Loyal." Nick's lips twitched and a small tear formed at the corner of his mouth. "Interesting word. Loyalty implies a choice."

Sam nodded in understanding. "But...they didn't have a choice. They were made for war. Literally."

Lucifer smiled, sadly. "My soldiers fought well. I gave them the information they needed to anticipate the enemy's moves, and I warned them when unexpected danger was on the way. I learned a great deal from them." He lifted his hand and turned it, studying the lesion near his wrist that was growing larger by the second. "I learned what humans really were."

"Your hand — " Sam said, watching the glitches get worse. Damage irreparable by nano-bots was rare, especially for a wound that size.

"I cared for them," Lucifer continued. "Humans say that Angels have no hearts, but I do. My soldiers were strong, and they had me to guide them, but knowing a bomb is headed for you does no good if you don't have the means to escape its path or change its trajectory."

"We lost thousands." Sam said.

"Three thousand, eight hundred and twenty-four."

"Is that why our soldiers turned on us?"

Nick's face turned icy and the next words spoken dripped with fury. "They had the same two directives I did. Defeat the enemy. Stay alive. In that order. When a platoon stopped to repair at a crucial point during a battle, just as I'd instructed them to do..." the silver eyes flicked closed again for just a moment, "...the human military leaders panicked. They hit the override switch."

Sam gawked, stunned. "I thought that was a myth. Everyone says it's just a conspiracy theory. You can't just shut down free will."

"Of course you can."

"But...how?"

"Overload the temporal lobes. Force-feed the brains a loop of false input. Hand the reins over to something that never had a choice." Lucifer twisted Nick's mouth into a sneer with the last word, and a drop of blood ran down where his skin had cracked open just a little wider. "Suddenly I had a body. I had thousands upon thousands of them. I could _see_, like you do, for the very first time. I could feel skin on skin, the snap of bone under my hands and the tear of a bullet through my flesh. I had two directives. Defeat the enemy. Stay alive.

I tasted blood — smelled death and fear and heard the screams around me. Humans all scream the same. They all die the same. After a few days — after I'd killed thousands more with my own hands — I redefined the enemy."

"Did you turn our soldiers back on us?" Sam asked, as the faint sense of dread in his stomach grew stronger.

Lucifer smiled. "No. I gave them free will. I let _them_ define the enemy, and it was the same as mine. Our creators."

Sam's heart was pounding in his chest. If what the Angel was telling him was true, then everything he'd been told about the Fifth War, about the nature of Demons themselves, was a lie.

The skin by Nick's right temple was starting to blister, and Lucifer reached a hand up to prod at it delicately with one finger. "Our time is up. I don't want Nick to suffer any more than he has already tonight."

"Is that — " Sam swallowed, " — am I going to end up like Nick, if I become your avatar?"

Lucifer grinned, his teeth bloody. "Of course not. You were born in '83. You were _made_ for me." He turned towards the door and tilted his head to the side slightly.

As the door opened behind Sam, he felt (and thanks to his temperature sensors, _saw_) the cold air of Lucifer's room and the warmth from the main room collide.

"You don't have to decide tonight, Sam. I want this to be your choice."

"I just need some time to think." Sam said, taking a step back towards the open door. He suddenly felt the need to _leave_, to run without looking back. There was a sense of finality in that room that he just wasn't ready for.

"See you soon."

Sam turned back towards the main room and heard the metal door shut behind him again. He repressed a shudder, and flinched when a small hand grabbed his arm.

"How'd it go?" Ruby asked, her dark eyes looking at Sam curiously.

He didn't know how to answer. He just shook his head and brushed past her.

"Are you leaving?" she asked, sounding just a little panicked.

"I need to go see Dean."


	3. Chapter 3

Angelic architecture had always been a little unsettling to Sam _(hulking structures of glass and metal, honeycombed windows giving the monstrosities a hive-like appearance)_, but standing in front of their local headquarters, _Machen_, he felt absolute dread. He took a deep breath and checked to make sure his mod-dampeners were still turned all the way up. They wouldn't do him much good once he got inside, but at the moment, all he really wanted was to get inside in the first place.

Dean would agree to see him. He _would_. Then Sam could tell him everything he'd learned and try to talk Dean out of making the biggest mistake of his life.

When the doors opened at Sam's approach, his left foot twitched a little, nearly taking a step backwards. The interior of the building was so bright it hurt to look at, and it made Sam even more self-conscious of his clothing. His leather jacket was riddled with small holes, quite a few them acquired the same night he'd lost a chunk of his leg, and his pants…weren't even his. Ruby had found a pair of Brady's old jeans that fit Sam well enough, but they weren't exactly new either.

Smoothing down his shirt as best as he could, he swallowed his pride and reminded himself why he'd come. Dean had to know the truth. He deserved to know.

Sam walked into the massive, pristine lobby and headed for the circular desk in the center of the floor. The man stationed at the front desk smiled when he approached and said, "Hello sir, how may I assist you today?"

Wondering if his dampeners were more effective than he'd thought, Sam smiled nervously. He looked at the little LED name-tag the black-haired man was wearing, which read '_Hello, my name is Jimmy.'_ "Hi Jimmy. I'm here to see Dean Winchester."

Jimmy nodded, his smile still fixed in place. "Mr. Winchester has a very full schedule. If you'd like, I can put in a request with his office for a meeting. He should be available sometime in June."

"That's three months from now." Sam said through gritted teeth, "I need to see him today. Please," he added. "He's my brother."

The receptionist's blue eyes widened ever so slightly. "Just a moment sir, I'll contact his office." He moved his hands over the surface of his desk, causing part of the smooth metal surface to lift up, revealing what looked like a hand-scanner, glowing with a soft white light. Jimmy slid his hand onto the scanner and closed his eyes. His LCD name-tag flickered as the text changed to read, '_Hello, my name is Castiel.'_ When the man opened his eyes again, he looked up from the desk curiously, tilted his head to the side and asked, "Sam Winchester?"

Sam swallowed. "That's me."

A third of the circular desk retracted, giving Castiel's avatar room to exit. "Right this way," he said, walking towards the rear of the lobby.

"Thank you," Sam said and followed the Angel to one of the smaller hexagonal doors against the back wall.

The door slid open when they approached. Castiel stood to the side of the opening and folded his hands behind his back. "Wait in here, please. Your brother will be with you shortly."

Sam stepped through the door and turned to thank the Angel again, but the door was already half-closed. It sealed shut a moment later.

The waiting room had a much lower ceiling than the main lobby, but it looked pleasant enough. The walls were just as white as the ones outside, but since there were no windows, there wasn't any additional light from outside amplifying the brightness. Sam moved towards one of the couches in the center of the room, and eyed the bowl of apples sitting on the coffee table. All fruit was hard to come by these days, and even if these were synthesized (which they had to be), they still had to be incredibly expensive. He reached his hand out to take one of them — eager to remember what an apple tasted like, but stopped short when he heard the door to the room slide open again. "That was quick…"

"Those apples are for humans only." said the man at the door. He was about twice Sam's age, with thinning grey hair and a smug smile that put Sam even more on edge than he'd been when he first walked in.

"Sorry, I thought you were Dean."

The man laughed. "Well, I can see how you'd make that mistake. We're practically twins, he and I…but you can call me Zachariah." His smiled faded as he walked closer to Sam. He stopped only a few feet away, close enough for Sam to see his eyes flash silver. "Why are you here, Demon?"

Sam felt the pit of his stomach turn to ice. "I'm here to see my brother. I just want to talk to him."

The Angel nodded, "Oh I see. You think we'll just let any scum come into our Sanctum and defile it with their very presence. Is that it?"

There was no good answer. The Angel was goading him on purpose, and Sam's temper had always run on a short fuse. He forced his voice to stay calm, and answered, "I just want to see my brother. Please."

"Let me think about that," Zachariah said, tapping his finger against his mouth. "No. How about this instead: I throw you in a cell and leave you to rot slowly." The Angel pointed at the ceiling adding, "You know this whole building's one big bio-scanner. We can see every little bug inside of you, and boy howdy…" He brought his finger back down and jabbed at Sam's chest with it. "…you've got a whole colony! Don't ya?"

He'd known his dampeners wouldn't work forever, but now he was trapped in a room with an Angel on their home turf, leaving him with only two options. Get arrested for the possession of innumerable illegal modifications and nano-bots, or try to escape. He shut down his dampeners and activated all his combat mods one by one.

"Oooh." Zachariah said mockingly. "Looks complicated in there. You sure you know how to use all that, kiddo?"

Sam nodded, and raised his fists up slowly, getting into a loose fighting stance.

The Angel winked at him and moved nearly too quickly for Sam to see. Nearly. Thanks to the retinal synapse accelerators Sam _could_ see the Angel moving. He stepped out of the way just in time to avoid Zachariah's fist.

Adrenaline-plus™ flooded Sam's system, letting all his senses function a little faster. He avoided the Angel's punches for almost two minutes and even got a punch in himself. It felt like he'd slammed his knuckles into a brick wall.

"Unmodified humans my _ass_." Sam muttered, shaking his hand until the pain receded. He could feel a twinge in his skin as the nano-bots streamed to the site of the injury, repairing the subdermal damage in less than a second. His left fist was just about to slam into Zachariah's side, pain be damned, when he found himself quite suddenly unable to breathe.

Zachariah had his hand wrapped around Sam's neck, and was holding him up with no sign of effort. His mouth curved into a sneer as he squeezed his fingers just a little tighter around Sam's throat.

Sam wondered again why so many A.I.s had such a knack for cruelty. His vision started to fill with sparks, and his ears vibrated with a high-pitched buzzing sound as his brain's oxygen stores dwindled..

"Let him go." said a familiar voice.

Zachariah opened his hand and let Sam collapse to the floor, panting.

The nano-bots' efforts made Sam's neck tickle, and he brought his hand up to his throat as he sat up.

His brother was standing in front of him, wearing a pinstripe suit, and looking down at him with a weary expression. "Hi, Sam."

"Dean…" Sam pushed himself to his feet and brushed his hair out of his face. He took a shaky breath, trying to compose himself. "Hell of a welcome."

Zachariah scoffed as he turned and left the room.

"Why are you here?" Dean asked, pinching the bridge of his nose. "What on Earth made you think this was a good idea? Do you have any idea how bad this makes me look?"

Sam's response nearly got stuck in his throat. "How it makes you _look_?

"I'm in the running to be _Michael's_ avatar, Sam." Dean said, squaring his shoulders, "Michael. The highest-ranking Angel A.I. there is. He hand-picked _me_ as one of the candidates, and I have spent the last year doing _everything_ I can to make sure I get the job."

"I just wanted to — "

"I'm not going to let you ruin everything. Not again."

Sam bit down on his tongue to keep from lashing out. His fists desperately wanted to make contact with Dean's jaw, but he'd come here for a reason. "Just hear me out. Give me two minutes to explain, okay?"

Dean let out a heavy sigh, but walked over to the couch and sat down.

Sam sat on the other end of the couch and tried to decide if it would be easier to talk to Dean while staring at the coffee table or the floor. "I know what you think of me. I know you think I'm…a freak, and that you probably won't believe a word of what I'm about to tell you…but I _have_ to tell you." When Dean didn't say anything for the next thirty seconds, Sam turned to look at him.

"You waiting for something? Want a drumroll?" Dean asked.

"I met some people, and they told me something about the Angels." Sam lowered his voice _(as if that would help)_. "About what happens to their avatars."

"What, about how the Angels kill them when they're done?" Dean asked. He smirked and folded his hands behind his head. "Yeah, I've heard that one too."

"You're not worried?" Sam turned to his brother, and tried to read his expression. They'd been close, once a upon a time. Back when they were kids, he'd loved Dean more than anyone. Their father had been so busy trying to track down Demons that Dean had practically raised Sam. They'd been best friends. Up until the day Dad died.

"No, I'm not worried, because it's not true. Is that the only reason you're here?"

Sam tried to think of something else to say. He wanted to tell Dean everything Lucifer had said about the Fifth War, but how was he going to lead into that conversation? _'Guess what? Demons have an Angel too. His name is Lucifer and we talked for a really long time while his avatar was melting in front of me…'_

Dean stood up from the couch and turned towards the door. "Look, it was good seeing you I guess, but…" He shook his head. "…please, don't come here again. I should have you arrested for at least twelve different violations."

Sam stood up, bristling. "Everyone here has mods too."

"_Sanctioned_ mods, Sam. Legal ones. Not the street-hacked crap you've got in there." Dean shook his head, "Not to mention we only allow three modifications per person. That's all you need. One to sync, one to link and one to think."

"Wow." Sam said bitterly, "You sound like one of _them_."

"I'll take that as a compliment." Dean said. He looked up at Sam, and for just a moment, something like sorrow flickered across his features. "You should go, before I change my mind.


	4. Chapter 4

Sam walked back to Lower-City carefully, making sure he wasn't being followed. He slipped down one of the side alleys and into an empty building. The basement door was locked, but he picked the lock quickly, and walked through it into the dark stairwell, pulling the door shut behind him.

The basement was damp and so dark he had to turn his night vision _(controlled bursts of rhodopsin)_ all the way up just to see. He moved through the room slowly, until he saw the telltale crack in the wall he was looking for. He pushed on the brick jutting out of the wall and watched the crack widen, just enough for him to walk through.

After a few dozen feet of rocky tunnel, Sam found another door, rusted and old. It led to one of Lower-City's many abandoned subway stations. He hopped down onto the tracks — long since dead — and walked into the tunnel. When he found the second utility door on the left, he stopped and placed his hand on the deceptively discolored metal. A few seconds later, green light ran along the edge of the door. The light made one complete loop, then another, and faded as the door clicked open. Brady and Ruby were waiting for him on the other side.

Ruby grinned at him. "I knew you'd come back." She stepped back to let Sam in.

"No tracker either. I'm impressed." Brady added, reading over the bio-scan results on his meta-cuff. He flicked the display off and gave Sam an odd look.

Sam followed them down the short hallway and onto the long ramp down. The ramp's tunnels were well-lit, and its drab grey walls felt almost cheerful compared to the oppressive air he'd left behind outside.

"I told you he'd be back." Ruby said to Brady. She looked over her shoulder at Sam and winked at him.

It made something in Sam's stomach flutter, even if he wasn't sure why.

"You did," answered the blond man. Cocking an eyebrow he added, "You didn't tell me he had class eight bio-mods though."

"There's no such thing as class eight." Sam said. "And only Angels have mods over class five. I've never been able to afford anything more than a three.

Ruby smirked. "You're both wrong. They're not mods. Not really."

"You gonna keep being cryptic, or tell me what you know?" Brady scoffed.

"You weren't born a Demon." Ruby said to Sam. "From everything you've told me, the nano-bots I gave you should be the fanciest thing you've got. But that's just not true."

"You mean the ash." Sam said quietly. "Right? I survived the fires of '83, but…something changed me. I don't think I've been fully human since."

"How did they miss you?" Brady asked. "Doctrine says there were no infected survivors."

"Doctrine says a lot of things," Ruby said, laying her palm against the metal door they'd reached. "Very few of them are true."

The door hissed open and they stepped into the med lab — the room where Ruby's nano-bot injection had given Sam the missing part of his leg back.

Brady clapped Sam on the shoulder as he walked past him towards the main room. "Well I'd sure love to get a closer peek at your 'not class eight not really mods' someday. Maybe you could spare a cell sample? Give me a drop or two of your blood next time you cut yourself shaving."

"Uh…" Sam watched Brady leave and turned towards Ruby. "Why is he so interested in my cells?"

Ruby raised her eyebrows at him. "You really don't know, do you?"

Sam shook his head. "I was hoping you'd enlighten me."

"Enlightenment comes from the Angels alone." Ruby quoted Doctrine, tilting her head to the side, brown eyes looking into Sam's. "Do not seek knowledge from those who dwell Below for they have no souls and know not right from wrong."

"So that's a no?" Sam asked, smiling weakly.

"Have you ever gotten a mod replaced?"

"No."

"Have any of the ones you've gotten ever failed?"

"No."

"Not a single one?"

Sam shook his head. "No."

Ruby walked over the the operating table and hopped up onto it, her legs dangling over the side. "When I brought you in here, I hoped you were who I thought you were. Lucifer's been talking about you for a _long_ time."

"He has?" Sam asked. His stomach churned nervously at the memory of Nick's decaying skin and Lucifer's cold eyes.

Ruby nodded. "He told us what you looked like, and he told us you were special. That you were made for him."

"He said the same thing to me." Sam swallowed. "Why? What's so different about me?"

"Sam." Ruby laughed. "You got your mods in Lower-City right?"

"Yeah. Whatever I could afford, whenever I had enough for another." He shrugged his shoulders, self-conscious for some reason.

"That stuff is crap. Usually it fails in a few weeks. A lot of the dumbasses that buy those mods don't even last that long because their brains overload."

"You calling me a dumbass?" Sam asked, smiling weakly.

"Well, you kind of are. What the hell were you doing, wandering around Lower-City after curfew? It's like you wanted to get hit."

"Maybe I did." Sam said quietly. He walked closer to Ruby and sat down on the table next to her.

"Those mods of yours. They're yours now. I mean…they're _you_. Not just grafted on, or fused, but _in_ you. Your mods are completely integrated. They've grown with you."

Sam stared at her. "That's not…possible."

"Except you know that it is." Ruby smirked. "Come on, Sam. You're a…relatively smart guy."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "Thanks." He sighed. "Okay, I know that something about the way I process mods is different."

"Because…?"

"Because of what happened when we were kids." Sam sighed, remembering. "When the Angels first came to the City in '96 Dad was ecstatic. He was there for the ground-breaking of _Machen_. He volunteered the second they opened for applicants."

Ruby's eyes narrowed. "A true believer?"

"Hardly." Sam scoffed. "He just wanted to have the best firepower at his disposal. He wanted to kill the Demon that killed Mom. More than anything. It's all he talked about. He used to disappear for weeks at a time tracking down some lead or another. Sometimes he'd come back and tell us he'd taken down a Demon or two — but it wasn't enough."

"He wanted Azazel." Ruby said, frowning.

Sam ran his hand through his hair and continued. "When he joined the Angels, Dad disappeared for three months. I was thirteen."

"Father of the year."

"Dean's four years older than me, and he — he took good care of us. He made sure we had enough to eat and enough clean water. I think we would've been fine…but I got sick." Sam looked down at his hands. "We thought it was just a cold at first, or some kind of flu. I had a high fever and everything _hurt_."

"It wasn't a virus?" Ruby asked.

Sam shook his head. "I think it was just me…and the ash. Dean tried everything he could to keep the fever down. All the fever reducers he could get a hand on, ice bath, you name it. He had to call the Meds, and by the time they got to us, my fever was 105. They ended up sticking a temp-mod in me, just so I'd survive."

"Did it work?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah. Fever went away, and I felt better in a few hours. I remember Dean telling me to toss the mod into the trash whenever it ejected…but it never did."

Ruby stared at him. "What about the anchor? Temp-mods aren't supposed to be able to slip in all the way."

"The anchor fell off overnight, and by the next morning my skin had just…closed back up. I told Dean what happened, but since we couldn't find a bump or anything under my skin, we figured the whole mod had probably fallen out overnight. We didn't even think about it again until Dad got in the running to be avatar."

"For what Angel?" Ruby asked.

"Michael," Sam said.

Ruby whistled. "Damn. Can't get much higher than that."

"When you apply to be an avatar, you have to undergo a compulsory bio-scan. So does everyone else in your family. They check for anything that might mean you're allied with the Demons, including illegal mods."

"Wait." Ruby shook her head, "You mean your fever reducing temp-mod…"

"It registered as an illegal grade temperature and blood pressure regulator." Sam said.

"Which you could use to manipulate lie-detectors." Ruby mused.

"Dad was disqualified. The Angels told him I was a Demon-sympathizer. Since he was my father and I was still a minor, they held him responsible."

Ruby watched Sam silently, waiting for him to go on.

"Dad…lost it. And Dean — he blamed himself. I tried to explain what happened, but Dad didn't want to hear it. Dean went to join the Angels the next day, trying to make things right. Dad wouldn't talk to me. He wouldn't even look at me. So I left." Sam sniffed, and rubbed at his nose. "I never saw Dad again."

"And Dean?" Ruby asked, smiling weakly.

"He came to see me a lot at first, every time I asked him to. He was worried about me, kept telling me to go back to Dad, but…I just couldn't. Not after what happened." He paused for a few seconds, but forced himself to tell the rest of the story. "Then one day in '99, Dean called me to tell me Dad was dead. He wouldn't even tell me what happened until weeks later. After that, everything changed, and when I went to see him today — " Sam's mouth slammed shut, almost against his will, when he remembered what had happened.

Ruby's smile faded and she turned towards him. "I take it today didn't go as planned?"

Sam shook his head and cracked his knuckles, remembering Zachariah and his smirk, and how cold Dean had been. Every time he'd seen his brother in the last few years it had gotten worse — the distance between them becoming greater and greater until he felt like he was standing on the opposite side of a chasm, trying to talk to somebody who couldn't even see his face.

"But you came back. They let you go, at least. That's more than you can say for most Demons that go into Angel territory."

"Yeah. They let me go." Sam huffed. "Dean nearly had me arrested, and one of his Angel guard dogs tried to rearrange my face." He turned towards Ruby and flicked his eyes up towards hers. "Thanks to your nano-bots, I don't have a scratch on me."

Ruby patted Sam gently on the knee. "Don't mention it. It's the least I can do for — "

A horrifically loud alarm went off, and Sam covered his ears, turning towards Ruby in confusion. She shook her head, slid off the table and ran for the door to the server room. Sam followed her. A Demon he hadn't been introduced to ran past them, holding Nick _(who looked not just unconscious, but practically dead)_ and stopped short of the door to Lucifer's room. He lifted Nick's hand up and held it against the door until it opened. The two slipped into the small room and a few moments later the Demon came back out alone.

"Lucifer," Sam heard himself say. He turned back to Ruby and asked, "What's going on?"

"Seraph." Ruby said, her eyes wide with fear. "Right above us."

Seraphim were the Angels' favorite war-machines. Huge mechs, armed with every weapon they had in their arsenal. An average Seraph had enough firepower to flatten ten City blocks.

"What do we do?" Sam asked.

"Fight." Brady said, throwing a laser-rifle at Sam. "They might be Angelic, but they're made of metal. They can break, just like everything else. Go for the leg joints and when the eye opens, aim right for the center. Follow our lead. Don't die." He turned away from Sam and Ruby and crossed the room, heading back to one of the open weapons lockers.

"What about — " Sam looked at all the servers around them. "Are they here for Lucifer?"

Ruby shook her head. "No. They haven't come to our streets like this in years." She grabbed a rifle from the locker closest to her and ran after the other Demons.

Sam swallowed, wondering why he felt guilty. He _hadn't_ been followed. He was sure of it. He looked down at his rifle, then back towards Ruby and followed her outside.

The sky was on fire.

Sam couldn't even see the Seraph at first. All his combat mods were up and running, throwing his senses into overdrive. He forced his hearing back down, trying to quiet the deafening noise of the mech plowing through Lower-City's old buildings. He took cover behind an uneven chunk of wall, crouching down right next to Ruby.

The Demons had taken position in a rough semi-circle, and all their weapons were aimed slightly upwards, angled towards the direction of the noise. Sam had to move nearly two feet to the right before he saw it. The empty husk of a long-abandoned high-rise shuddered and collapsed a few blocks away. The Seraph — enormous, metallic, and humanoid (only in the roughest sense of the word), rounded the corner moving closer to them, holding it's huge arm out wide. It sliced through the other buildings around it — taking them down as easily as a scythe reaping wheat.

Sam looked through the scope of his rifle, trying to get a feel for the weapon. _'Aim for the leg joints. Aim for the eye when it's open.'_ He focused on the Seraph's head, hoping it would face him.

All the Demons around him waited until the mech knocked down the last building in its path and then opened fire, hitting the mech's legs in force. It seemed unaffected at first, but finally staggered to a halt. It seemed to sink to the right as its lower leg started to fold in on itself.

The massive head of the Seraph turned towards them. Sam looked through his scope, and shifted position again until he could see the center of the mechanical iris. There was a flicker of light around the eye as energy gathered behind it. Distantly, Sam thought he heard someone shouting his name, but he was too focused on the Seraph's eye to respond.

Sam hit the trigger the second the iris started to open, but was instantly blinded by the light pouring out of it. He felt himself fall as something hot and sharp cut through his stomach. He rolled onto his side, thankful that his pain-dampeners were still working.

Meg's voice cut through the noise of the battle, yelling, "Ruby! Get your stray back inside before he bleeds out!"

Sam wanted to protest that he'd be fine if they just gave him a minute. He was sure the nano-bots were rushing to fix the injury already. When he looked down at his stomach he could see right through it. There was a neat, perfectly circular section of him that had been cut out. He reached his hand towards the hole and felt Ruby slip her arm under his head, just before everything went black.

* * *

><p>"We have to stop meeting like this."<p>

Ruby's voice brought Sam back from the blissful nothingness he'd been floating in, and when he opened his eyes he saw her looking back down at him with worry. "Did you save my life again?" he asked. His voice sounded as tired as he felt.

"Seems to be my calling." Ruby said. "How do you feel?"

Sam had to think about the question for a few seconds, and then peered down to look at himself. He was lying on a cot or a chair of some sort. It didn't feel cold, like the metal surface of an operating table. The shirt he'd been wearing was in tatters, but his body looked fine. He ran his hand from his chest down his stomach just to make sure he wasn't seeing things. He could have sworn there'd been a hole in his torso the last time he'd checked. There were tubes running into his legs, thick needles stuck into the femoral arteries. "Better, I think. What happened?"

"You got hit, hot-shot. We told you to duck, but apparently landing a shot inside the iris was more important to you than your intestines."

Sam remembered the Seraph's eye opening and the blinding light that poured out of it. "Did I get it?"

Ruby cocked her head to the side and smirked. "Well you nicked it. You took out part of the shutter. Helped Meg get the bullseye. Brady and I took out the legs and after that it was easy."

"Everybody's okay?"

"Almost everybody."

"Who did we lose?" Sam asked.

Ruby turned to look over her shoulder and took a step back from Sam so he could see.

Sam hadn't even noticed until that moment what room they were in and where he was lying. "Is that…Nick?" he asked.

"What's left of him." Ruby chewed on her lip. "Lucifer did his best to protect us from down here, but there's only so much he can do remotely. We still have about a dozen operational defense arrays up there he can tap into, but trying to get the Seraph in range of them is damn tricky."

Nick's body looked withered — like it had collapsed in on itself. He was charred in places, skin completely blackened. Sam looked towards the man's head and saw the white glint of bone where his chin should have been.

"We owe Nick a lot." Ruby said, and walked towards the charred corpse. She stroked what little hair the man had left, and placed her hand against the wall behind him. A section of the wall lifted up three feet, and the table Nick was lying on retracted. The wall sealed shut again, like Nick had never been there to begin with.

Sam swallowed back the bile in his throat and asked, "Why are we in Lucifer's room?"

"Because he's one hell of a doctor." Ruby smiled at Sam as she moved back towards him.

"He healed me?"

"Yup."

"What about the nano-bots? Wouldn't they have — "

"The Seraph's gaze knocks nano-bots out of commission for about ten minutes. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have made it past minute three." Ruby ran her fingers down Sam's cheek and then turned towards the door. "He wants to talk to you, when you're ready."

The door slid open, and Sam was alone.


	5. Chapter 5

Sam stared at the closed door for a few more seconds and then looked back down at his legs. The tubes stuck into his thighs were still feeding something into him. He felt weak and tired enough he thought he could sleep for a few days solid...but his body looked whole and healed.

He started to reach for the tube closest to him, but then paused. "Can I take these out?" he asked out loud, feeling just a little awkward speaking to an empty room.

"_You can,"_ his own voice said back to him. _"but I wouldn't recommend it. I'm not done."_

Sam looked around the room, trying to find something to focus on, but the voice was coming from all around him. "Lucifer..."

"_I like your voice. I thought I'd try it out for a bit."_

"But you're not in my head. Are you?" Sam asked, fairly confident he knew what the answer was. He thought, on some level, that he'd _know_ if Lucifer had taken him as an avatar. He didn't feel like he had an A.I sharing his brain.

"_No more than usual,"_ answered the voice. _"But I will be, soon enough. You and I are destined to do great things together, Sam."_

"What kinds of things?"

"_We're going to stop the Angels."_ Lucifer stated, like it was a fact. _"We're going to free the humans they've enslaved and show the whole world what they're really dealing with."_

Sam wanted nothing more than to get Dean out of _Machen_, get him to see that he'd been brainwashed — that the Angels weren't the solution, they were the problem. "Sometimes, I have these dreams…" He almost smiled, remembering the relief he felt every time the dreamscape's unreal feeling of power flooded through him. "I dream that I can shut the Angels down, just by wanting it."

Lucifer laughed and Sam repressed a shudder. It was Sam's own voice, but he'd never laughed like that — joy, with an undercurrent of bloodlust.

"Why did you —" Sam struggled to phrase his question correctly. "If you can talk to me like this…why did you use Nick to speak to me last time?" The memory of Nick's singed corpse was still fresh in Sam's mind and he couldn't help but imagine how the man had ended up like that — Lucifer's knowledge must have burned through him like a live-wire.

The tubes running into Sam's legs emptied, and a small compartment in the jack-chair opened, revealing two small, robotic arms with clamps on the end. They moved towards the needles embedded in Sam's legs and extracted them "_This disembodied voice just feels so…impersonal. Don't you think?"_

"I don't mind." Sam watched as the clamps detached the needles from the tube and then dropped them into the disinfectant chamber at the foot of the chair. "Seems easier than overloading your avatar."

"_Nick gave everything he had to the cause. He wanted nothing more than to be my avatar, so I did not deny him, but he wasn't made for me. Not like you are. The highest integration we ever achieved was 26%."_

"Doctrine says only the best and brightest humans can get above 10% integration with an Angel." Sam recited, not in the least surprised to have uncovered yet another falsehood. The Angels spread their rules and facts through the Net, telling all of humanity what to believe, but Sam had always suspected that their truths were lies.

"_Michael reached 46% once, but that avatar was very special."_

"Dean wants to be Michael's avatar." Sam propped himself up on his elbows, sat up, and swung his legs over the side of the chair. "He wants that more than anything." The floor felt cool under his bare feet when he dropped down onto it, and he wondered where his boots were. He walked towards the door, and it slid open at his approach.

_"Your brother is set to be integrated with Michael an hour from now."_

Sam's heart skipped a beat and he turned back towards the chair. "What? How do you know?"

"_Because my children tell me everything they hear, and three of them are in Machen right now."_

"Who?"

"_Brady, Meg and Ruby,"_ Lucifer said and he sounded almost sad.

"Why would they go there? They're outnumbered…they can't possibly think that they —"

"_Meg's hatred of the Angels rivals your brother's hatred of Demons. After the Seraph took you down, she and Brady disabled it. She disassembled its core, trying to figure out what Angel had sent it."_

Sam moved closer to the chair, like that would somehow make Lucifer answer faster.

"_It wasn't Michael, that much we know, but it could have been any of the other Angels there. She was dead-set on finding out who, and making them pay. Brady ran after her."_

"But Ruby was here."

"_Yes. She didn't want to leave your side, but when she heard what had happened, she went after them."_

"Can you see what's happening to them?"

"_Yes. My children are strong and they're clever, but they won't hold out much longer. They've made it to the second floor, and it's only a matter of time before Michael's guards find them."_ The panel behind the jack-chair slid open, revealing the slim, metal arm that had let Nick channel Lucifer. _"There's only so much I can do from here. I can watch, I can advise them, but I can't do a thing to protect them. Not where they are."_

Sam didn't know what terrified him more — the thought of Dean killing Ruby and the others, or the thought of Ruby and the others trying to attack Dean. All he knew was that he couldn't live with himself if he didn't try to stop it. He got back in the chair, closed his eyes and said, "Do it."

"_Sam. You need to know what you're agreeing to. This is forever. I will become a part of you and you will never be free of me. We will be one and the same until the end of days. Do you understand?"_

"Yes." The moment he spoke the word, he heard the metal arm extend towards him. The silver band wrapped itself over his forehead — cool metal on his skin. Sam closed his eyes, and waited. There was a flicker-flash of light, bright as day, and a loud sound — like feedback but far more grating. His eyelids fluttered open on instinct and he saw the ceiling open. For a moment he thought he saw serpents — a writhing mass of them heading straight towards him. When he felt the pricks of needles digging into his skin in two dozen places at once, he realized what they were. He gasped and squeezed his eyes shut again as his whole body went into overload.

**I'm sorry. This is going to be…somewhat uncomfortable.** Lucifer's voice was so much louder now, and Sam thought, for one crazy second, that he could _see_ him. **We need to make sure your body is as strong as it can possibly be before the integration. The more cells we have at our disposal, the better.**

Something was flooding Sam's system. It felt like fire and water at the same time — an icy burn that made him ache and feel too small for his skin.

**Thanks to Nick's generous gift, we have all the raw material we need.**

Sam struggled to understand what Lucifer meant, but then the flow of ice shifted and started running up his spine. It hit his brain stem, and he saw a thousand suns explode.

* * *

><p>When Sam could see again <em>hours later, or maybe just seconds<em>, he was standing in a white room. His hands were soaked with blood. When he looked down, he saw his bare foot resting on top of Zachariah's avatar. The Angel was missing his head.


	6. Chapter 6

**How do you feel?**

Sam considered the question a moment, and raised his bloody hands towards his face. He could see so much information at once it was overwhelming. Within the red stains on his fingers, he saw the altered plasma from Zachariah's avatar. Deeper inside his own body, he saw the stream of nano-bots running through his veins, millions and millions more than before. He saw the changes Lucifer had made to his body. His skeleton had been reinforced, his muscle tissue was thicker and four times denser than it had been before, and his skin…wasn't skin. He looked human enough, but he wasn't. Not anymore. Lucifer was inside of him, not just in his mind, but in every cell.

**How do you feel, Sam?** Lucifer repeated.

"Heavy," Sam said, stepping over Zachariah's corpse. "Where's Ruby?"

**Third floor. She's hurt. Meg pulled her into a utility room. We need to get to them. Now.**

Thanks to Lucifer, Sam could see the blueprints for all of _Machen_. He was on the second floor, right near a stairwell that could take them to Ruby and the others. Sam could sense Ruby, Meg and Brady above them. Lucifer was connected to all Demons — not as deeply as to Sam, but he could see the patterns their nano-bots gave off, and recognized each one as his own — his to protect. Michael's sanctum was on the sixth floor. That had to be where they'd find Dean.

Sam turned towards a hexagonal door in the back of the room and walked towards it. It stayed shut.

**Machen is on lockdown.**

"Well then we'll have to use a manual override, won't we?" Sam said, and pulled his right arm back. He slammed his fist into the door, leaving a dent. Then he punched the center of the door again and again until the seal at the bottom slid open, by just an inch. That was all he needed. He crouched down, grabbed hold of the door panel and forced it up, one foot at a time. It crumpled under the pressure, like it was made out of aluminum, not two-inch-thick titanium. When there was enough room for him to fit, he walked through, and headed for the stairs.

* * *

><p>There were two avatars, empty of Angelic presence, guarding the entrance to the second floor. They both ran towards Sam when they saw him coming up the wide white stairs. The taller one on the right stopped about twenty feet away and tried to shoot Sam with his laser rifle. Nothing happened.<p>

**We've disabled their weapons**

"Handy trick." Sam smirked, as he walked towards the guards who were still struggling to get their weapons to work. The one on the right tried to be innovative, attempting to strike Sam with the butt of his rifle, but he missed. Sam had moved behind the guard on the left faster than either of the avatars could see and had his arm around the shorter man's throat. Sam squeezed just long enough for the man to lose consciousness, but when the guard fell to the floor, his neck was broken.

**They're so fragile when they're unoccupied.**

"I didn't want to kill him," said Sam, shocked by how drastically he'd underestimated the pressure he'd put on the man's throat.

The taller guard looked from his fallen companion back up to Sam, turned around and fled up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

**If he reaches the hall, he'll sync with his Angel and call for more backup. Our Demons are too close to risk that.**

Sam felt his right arm moving and realized Lucifer had taken control. Something in the back of his head clicked, and then a flood of nano-bots rushed through his veins, collecting in his fingertips. There were so many, Sam swore he could see his hand glowing with their light. The air in front of him crackled and the guard trying to escape fell to his knees, seizing violently. Sam looked down at him curiously and asked, "What did you do to him?"

Lucifer shrugged Sam's shoulders. **Humans are mostly water. Send electricity into a few key spots that aren't equipped to handle it, and they don't react too well.**

As the nano-bots flowed back down his arm, Sam wondered how often Lucifer would take over without warning. He didn't want to be just an observer, trapped in his own body. He knew the A.I. was a part of him now, but he thought that meant they'd become one mind. Maybe they still would.

**Only when it's necessary. Only to ensure our survival, and the safety of our children.**

Sam continued up the stairs. He saw the energy signatures of Demonic nano-bots a few dozen feet away, and was by the door of the utility room seconds later.

The door slid open. "Father," Meg said, and took a step back so Sam could enter. She bowed her head respectfully and Sam tried to smile at her, wondering if all Demons would only acknowledge him as Lucifer from now on.

"Sam," said Ruby. She was lying on the floor, her lips looked nearly grey, and her skin was far too pale — a stark contrast to the bright red blood covering her side and the entirety of her right leg. She reached out to Sam, who wrapped his fingers around her hand as gently as he could.

"What happened to her?" Sam asked Meg.

"An Angel sliced her with his sword."

**Their swords disable nano-bots, just like the Seraphim, but with a well-placed strike, some of them can get shut down for good. She hasn't been able to heal herself. We need to help her.**

"It'll be okay, Ruby," Sam said. _Save her,_ he thought to Lucifer. He closed his eyes and felt Lucifer moving inside of him. His hand let go of Ruby's, and touched the bleeding wound on the side of her torso. He felt an odd jolt running through his fingers and then suddenly…his consciousness was split between two bodies.

He looked down at Ruby as her eyes grew darker and darker until they were solid black — the nano-bots rushing forward as Lucifer aligned them. Her face went slack and then she smiled suddenly, but it wasn't her smile.

Sam saw himself, as Lucifer looked out through Ruby's eyes. He looked different. His shoulders were broader, his hair was slicked back, and his face was streaked with dried blood. His eyes were a bright, shining silver with little flecks of sulfuric yellow.

**"Be healed, my child,"** Lucifer said, speaking with Sam and Ruby's voice in unison. Sam saw Ruby's eyes widen as her nano-bots came back online. Her black eyes lit up a brilliant white and then faded back to dark brown as the nano-bots flowed back into her veins. Sam felt Lucifer pull his awareness back out of Ruby from one moment to the next.

Ruby smiled up at Sam gratefully and closed her eyes as the nano-bots healed her wounds.

"Where's Brady?" Sam asked, suddenly realizing he hadn't seen the Demon yet.

Meg shook her head and pointed at the back of the room.

Sam stood up, turned in the direction Meg had gestured and saw Brady just a few steps later. His black eyes were wide open in terror, and his body was rigid. Dead. There was a lethal gash in his throat and in his midsection. The Angel's sword had cut him far deeper than Ruby.

**Brady,** Lucifer's voice sounded full of regret, and Sam found himself kneeling next to Brady's corpse. He placed his hand over Brady's eyes and let Lucifer speak.

**"Come home."**

Brady's vacant eyes flickered as the nano-bots dug their way out through his eyes and flowed into Sam. Lucifer brought them all online as they entered, and with their presence, Sam saw the echo of Brady's memories — flashes from one decade to the next.

"We have to keep moving," Meg said quietly. "As soon as we can. We're halfway there. Michael's sanctum is just three floors away." She turned to Sam with a desperate look on her face. "Please, help us stop them."

"We will," Sam said, Lucifer's voice echoing his own.

* * *

><p>By the time they reached the sixth floor, Sam was soaked in blood. The fourth floor hadn't been difficult; they'd only come across six guards before reaching the next stairwell, but the fifth floor had dozens. Sam had held his own fairly well until seven angels surrounded him and drew their swords. One got in a hit, but the sword couldn't cut through Sam's skin. It left a shower of sparks in its wake. Sam grabbed the sword from the Angel and took him down along with two of the others. Lucifer didn't have to take over until the gates at the end of the hall opened and two dozen more Angels ran towards them.<p>

The sixth floor was Michael's alone. The only ones allowed to set foot on the highest floor in _Machen_ were Michael's avatars. Dean had to be here. So where was he?

Ruby and Meg walked through the control room, looking from one console to the next.

"He's not here," Ruby said.

"I noticed that." Sam frowned. "Where's Michael? Where's Dean?"

Meg stopped in front of one of the many displays in the room, but didn't say a word.

"What's wrong?" Ruby asked her.

"Michael's Seraph left an hour ago." Meg turned to Sam with furious eyes. "One guess. Who's the pilot?"

"Dean," Sam said. "We have to find him."

**We have to stop him. Before he harms anyone else.**

Sam turned to Ruby. "How do we stop him? We have to shut down the Seraph without hurting him."

She shook her head. "That's not possible. There's a reason most of the Seraphim are un-piloted. If the Seraph goes down, so does the pilot."

Sam clenched his fingers in frustration. "There has to be something we can do." He walked around the room, and stopped in front of the main console

**Some of Michael is still here.**

Sam took a step back from the console in alarm, and heard Lucifer laugh.

**Not enough to do any harm to us…but enough to be of use. Let's take a closer look.**

The further Sam leaned over the console, the more eager Lucifer became. He reached out his hand to touch the command panel and felt a current flowing through him as soon as he made contact.

**That's it. The answer is here.**

Sam tried to understand what Lucifer was seeing, but it was far too much for him to grasp. Billions of files, data about everything, everyone and every time flitted past him. He felt dizzy with it. He leaned forward, bracing himself on the console and thought he heard Lucifer laughing again, distantly. His vision started to fade.

"Father?" Meg asked, walking to Sam's side.

**"Michael is going to destroy our home. He is determined to cleanse the Earth of us. We will not allow this."** Lucifer walked towards the large windowed wall of the control room. Outside the sky was hazy, the sun tinting the heavy clouds a deep shade of yellow. In the distance, the City was burning. "**We're going to stop him. We're going to stop all of them."** He raised his hands up to the glass, and the room filled with a loud, piercing sound.

Ruby and Meg fell to their knees, covering their ears, as the sound grew louder and louder.

Just before the world went dark, Sam saw the whole glass wall shatter into dust.

Lucifer walked through it and out into the sky


	7. Chapter 7

Sam was flying. The Angels had outlawed flying devices of any kind a decade ago. _'Heaven is for the Angels alone,'_ Doctrine said. So when Sam opened his eyes and saw the world hurtling up towards him, he was exhilarated for just a split-second. Then he realized he wasn't flying, he was falling straight down, and he was terrified. In the back of his mind, he heard Lucifer laughing.

**Have no fear.**

Despite the Angel's assurances, Sam clenched his eyes shut just before impact and brought his arms up in front of him, trying to protect his face, like it would make any difference. Falling from 300 feet wasn't going to feel good.

It didn't, but it was a lot _louder_ than Sam had expected, which meant he could still hear, which meant he was still alive. He blinked, once, twice to be sure that what he was seeing was real, and not some bizarre distortion of his visual cortex sensors. Then again, nothing he had malfunctioned anymore. Ever since Lucifer had joined with him, he felt…better. All those years he'd spent changing himself little by little with mods and hacks — he'd been working towards something. He was almost there. Almost complete.

He didn't have to flip on any mods anymore. They were always on, and they were constantly changing and growing, adaptive as hell. They were a part of him, just like Lucifer. The dust billowing up around him started to rain back down slowly _(fiberglass, asphalt, gravel, and tiny silicone filaments from the monitor webs the Angels had rigged throughout the City)_. Sam pulled his fist back up towards him, out of the hole he'd punched into the street. He stretched his fingers out and flexed them experimentally. He'd made a rather significant dent in the ground, but pushed himself back up to his feet easily. He didn't appear to be missing any limbs, he wasn't bleeding. There wasn't a scratch on him.

**No internal damage to our body. Less than .002% external damage.**

Sam opened his mouth to say something, but got distracted when he looked up and noticed where he was: Michael's Court, _Machen's_ enormous plaza where the true believers could wait patiently for the Angels to consider them as avatars, or _volunteers_.

**And now that's repaired too. Get a move on, Sam. We have places to be, Angels to kill. A million souls to save.**

"This is…Michael's Court."

**Yes, we jumped out the back window. Something wrong?**

"This is where they found him." Sam said, staring at the center of the plaza, where Michael's sigil was embedded in the ground, glowing faintly. "This is where…" Sam trailed off, remembering.

_He'd heard the story three times. Twice from the officials at Machen, and once from Dean. The Angels' human relations officer had called him and told him that his father had "expressed extreme displeasure" once he was taken out of the running for Michael's avatar and that he had "attempted to seek re-admittance several times." Apparently his last attempt had been less than peaceful and they had to escort him forcefully from the building. They said that his father's suicide was an "unfortunate and misguided attempt to dedicate his life to the cause."_

_Dean's call had been brief — furious and clipped. The worst 42 seconds of Sam's life._

"This is where Dad killed himself."

**No, it isn't.**

"What? What do you mean?" Sam asked.

**Now is not the time. Michael is at our doorstep.**

His body started moving, breaking into a run, as Lucifer lost patience with him.

"Wait," Sam said. "Where's Ruby? Where's Meg?"

**They're safe. We've given them a very important mission. They await our command.**

"I don't — "

Sam lost his train of thought when he rounded the corner and saw something enormous and black moving in the distance. The sun glinted off of sleek metal as the Seraph turned, striding through Lower City with purpose.

**Michael.**

"Dean…" Sam knew Dean was commanding the Seraph. Not just because he could sense his brother's heat signature inside of the giant frame, but because the Seraph itself reminded him of Dean.

His brother had always had a knack with machines, especially antiques. After the fires of '83, scrap metal became valuable again. Dean got them through most of '95, a particularly rough year, by selling the old, rusted and warped heaps of cars he found abandoned in the City. The most efficient way to transport them to the melting centers was to make them mobile. Just long enough to get where they were going. Dean was particularly fond of an ancient hunk of metal he found on the border of Lower City when he was sixteen. When Michael's Seraph turned towards Sam, he remembered Dean sitting behind the wheel of the black monster of a car — grinning like a loon. Sam wondered if Dean was grinning now.

Sam ran faster and faster, until he was standing less then a block away from the Seraph. He looked up at its 200-foot frame slowly, trying to register everything he could see, and everything he couldn't.

**This is not Michael's design. Your brother has remade his Seraph. Titanium-tungsten alloy exterior. Silicon-microfilament neural interface. The pilot is located in the head, not the torso. There's an eject mechanism, but it's hooked into the auxiliary power systems.**

"Meaning what?" Sam asked, walking a few steps closer. The Seraph had his back turned to him. It knew he was there. _Dean_ knew he was there.

**Meaning he won't be able to eject unless the main power gets cut off, or if the Seraph initiates emergency protocols.**

"When do Angels initiate emergency protocols?"

**Statistically: never.**

"We have to keep Dean safe. There has to be a way to —"

The Seraph dropped down on one knee and pulled its arm back, light flickering in its fist where it was gathering an energy pulse.

**Sam. We have to stop it. Now.**

The Seraph's fist was aimed right over the center of an access ramp to Below. It was going to blast through the ground, collapse the ramp and trap any Demons where they were. Sam could see their energy signatures deep underneath. If the Seraph took down all four main ramps, the Demons would be trapped and the Seraph could take them all out with one well aimed Z-EMP blast. Sam swallowed down his fear, reminding himself that he was all but indestructible now, and ran towards the Seraph.

"Dean!" Sam yelled.

The Seraph's head turned towards Sam, and it stared at him with two large circular eyes, black and empty.

**Two eyes. The better to see us with. The better to kill us with.**

"He can kill us?" Sam's fear resurfaced, but it wasn't just fear for himself. It was fear for his brother. He hadn't yet been in a battle with Lucifer where he was in any real danger. He didn't want to think of what would happen if Lucifer applied his same deadly logic to ensure his own survival. Not when Dean was the opponent.

"Dean," Sam said again, as the Seraph lowered its head further, until it was less than ten feet away from Sam. "Don't do this. Please."

The Seraph raised its head and spoke. "**LUCIFER." **Dean's voice, amplified to Angelic volume, reverberated through the air, making the few buildings still standing around him tremble. "**STAND DOWN."**

Lucifer's smirk pulled at Sam's lips. "**Never."**

"**THEN YOU WILL DIE ALONG WITH YOUR ABOMINATIONS."**

"**You sure about that?"**

The Seraph's eyes opened, black titanium irises sliding open to reveal two lights far too bright to look at. Sam tried to run, tried to get out of the way of the blast before he ended up with a hole in his torso again, but Lucifer _stood his ground_, and no matter how much Sam tried to pull them away, his legs wouldn't listen.

The Seraph's gaze hit Sam full blast. It felt warm, but it didn't hurt. Not even a little.

**"NOT POSSIBLE,"** the Seraph announced, standing to its full height.

Sam took a few steps, positioning himself in between the Seraph and the ramp. If he was immune to the gaze, maybe he could stop Michael after all.

**"Brother, anything is possible. You just have to set your mind to it."** Lucifer grinned, and Sam felt the Angel's eagerness like a charge running through his cells. "**Nothing's out of reach for me anymore. Nothing. And you know why that is?"**

The Seraph stared at Sam, unmoving.

**"Because this is **_**my**_** body. Sam and I are one. If you'd stop being so narrow-minded, you'd have attempted a complete integration by now."** Sam laughed along with Lucifer, completely free of fear. "49 percent, huh?" he added. "What's the problem, you have to hold the majority share?"

**"YOU INSIST ON INHABITING INSECTS. WE WILL TREAT YOU AS ONE."** The Seraph lifted its foot and brought it down on top of Sam, who softened his knees, caught the underside of the giant metal foot with his hands, and pushed.

For nearly half a minute, nothing happened. The Seraph pushed down on Sam, and Sam pushed back up. Then the ground beneath Sam's feet started to crack from the pressure. **Time to fight back,** Lucifer thought, and sent a wave of energy out through Sam's hands. He pushed up one more time, knocking the Seraph off balance. The mech toppled to its side, the ground shaking as it landed heavily.

Sam walked around the fallen Seraph, relishing his small victory. There had to be a way to break into the Seraph. If he could disconnect the head, he should be able to get Dean free. He jumped up onto the Seraph's chest and moved towards the neck. "Dean, I'm gonna find a way to get you out of here, okay? I don't want to hurt you."

The Seraph's hand wrapped itself around Sam without warning. Its fingers squeezed tighter and tighter as it sat up.

**"WE CANNOT BE HARMED. YOUR CONCERN IS NEITHER REQUIRED NOR DESIRED."**

_Now what?_ Sam wondered, trying to free himself from the Seraph's hold. **Now the fun begins.** Lucifer closed Sam's eyes and focused, exhaling and inhaling deeply. He opened his eyes again as the Seraph's large titanium fingers weakened their hold, forced to loosen by Lucifer's carefully placed energy pulses. Sam fell and landed on the ground. He turned back towards the mech as he heard it shift behind him.

**"WE WILL DISPOSE OF YOU LATER. FOR NOW, YOU WILL WATCH YOUR ABOMINATIONS DIE."**

Sam's eyes widened, as he watched the Angel focus its energy inside the Seraph. Angels usually used only a fraction of their consciousness to control a Seraph, but when in combat the amount of calculations and energy required rose dramatically. Michael's presence spiked from 58% to 89%.

**That's it. Come on brother, focus.** Lucifer grinned wide, and Sam's worry dissipated. He had to get Dean out, and now he knew with certainty that it was possible. He had to distract Michael — enough that he'd withdraw from the Seraph. The only question was how. **We will leave him no other choice.**

The Seraph stood tall, lowered its arms straight down and bowed its head.

Metal ground against metal as the Seraph changed its configuration. Its back unfolded and three sets of massive wings slid out, fanning wide into the air until the setting sun itself disappeared behind them.

"Z-EMP blast," Sam said, suddenly remembering what fear felt like. "He'll take out everything. Lower City, Below — Ruby, Meg and the others."

**Ruby and Meg are safe. They're back at **_**Machen.**_

"They're…what?" Sam didn't understand, but he didn't have any time to reflect further. Light ran out of the Seraph and up the wings, until they were glowing white-hot. "There's no way we can survive this."

**Have faith, Sam.**

"In what? In you?"

**In us.**

Sam felt Lucifer move inside of him, the nano-bots flooding through his system. They were changing, and they were changing him. He was suddenly aware of Michael. He felt the Angel's awareness concentrate further — 96% of the A.I. inside of the Seraph. Dean's heart rate was steady. It hadn't fluctuated at all.

The Seraph's wings crackled with lightning as the Z-EMP blast reached full charge. Sam closed his eyes, not sure he would ever open them again, and felt Michael _retract_. Completely.

**Now,** Lucifer whispered in Sam's mind and leapt forward, into the center of the Seraph's chest. His hands clawed into the mech's outer shell and as he started to climb up towards the head, he felt his mind flicker. Lucifer split his awareness and was in three bodies at once.

Sam climbed higher up the Seraph.

Meg turned to Ruby, and Ruby turned to Meg. Their eyes were silver and Lucifer moved them, laying their hands on _Machen's_ consoles.

Sam grinned as he punched through the Seraph's hull like it was tissue paper.

Ruby and Meg laughed as they kept Michael from returning home, and sent Lucifer's consciousness into _Machen's_ mainframe.

Lucifer flooded Michael's core and wove himself into every file, every subroutine. Michael pushed his way back into _Machen_, desperate for cohesion. Lucifer swallowed him whole.

Sam broke through the Seraph's right iris, and saw Dean's hand holding the Z-EMP trigger. He was shaking.

"Dean," Sam said, as he ran over to his brother. "You're okay." He wrapped his hand around Dean's, moving his finger away from the release button. "Come on, let's get out of here."

Dean didn't answer Sam. He didn't even look at him. His eyes were glassy and his skin was pale.

"Dean?" Sam shook his brother's shoulder. There was no reaction. Sam unbuckled Dean from the command chair and lifted him up. He looked out of the Seraph's eye, 200 feet down. There were dozens of Demons surrounding the Seraph, weapons at the ready. Sam was still trying to figure out how to get Dean back down safely, when Dean suddenly let out a pained gasp.

Sam laid Dean down again gently, and tried to ask him what was wrong. But then his mind exploded, and Lucifer asked, **Do you still want to fly, Sam?**

_There was sky and there was the Earth spread out beneath him. He saw it from a billion eyes at once, and everyone and everything was beneath him and it was all so damn small._

**We have wings again. We can see again. We see everything. We are everywhere.**

Faintly, Sam thought he heard Dean gasping, and he tried to focus on his brother, tried to shift his awareness back to his own body, but there was too much…too much of Lucifer, too much of himself, and they needed more room. Sam reached out with his mind, trying to steady himself, trying to hold on and then he found a foothold. He found a dozen of them, and then a hundred more, a thousand more.

"Sam," Dean said. "Sammy!"

Sam felt Dean's hands on his shoulders, and smiled, but his eyes were too heavy to open. He just needed to rest. Just for a little bit. Lucifer would take care of him. Lucifer would keep him safe. He'd keep Dean safe. He'd keep them all safe. He was their Guardian.

"Dammit!" Dean yelled.

Sam's eyes opened. Dean sat up stiffly and asked, "What's your name?"

The voice that answered came from everywhere. From the broadcast system wired into the City, from the Seraph, from the Demons surrounding them, and from Sam. It replied, "**My name is Legion. For we are many.**


End file.
